Imagine you create a mobile app and upload it to Apple's App store or Google's Play store to share with the world and potentially earn money. Then someone out of nowhere comes and claims that you violated their patent, and your ability to upload your apps belongs to them. They threaten with legal action if you don't pay "licensing fee". Your options are to stop sharing your app, or pay the hundreds of thousands to the patent troll, or fight in the courts spending millions. Everybody's situation would be different. However, the patent trolls target those who have some income, and just enough income to pay them, but not enough fight in the courts. This is a situation for many entrepreneurs and builders in the US.
Austen Meyer is one of them. Auster Meyer is software engineer who also have deep interests in flying planes. He builds an app that simulates flying planes which can be used for training, practice, and entertainment. Proud of what he has built, Austin uploads his X-plane app to the Goole Play store. After some time he is sued by a patent troll. Not for infringing some software that was created and/or used by another software company or developer. Not for the game itself. But for uploading the app to Google's Play store. Isn't that crazy? I think it is beyond crazy. Frustrated by the situation, Austin dives into this issue of patent trolls, patents in the US, and decides to make a documentary to share with the world this insane problem of patents and patent troll. He finds business people who had faced problems with patent trolls and presents them to us in this documentary along with interesting facts regarding this issue. After watching the documentary I have learned a lot, and agree with with the statement that these patent rules and patent trolls are scam.
You can visit the official website for The Patent Scam Documentary here. You can also watch the documentary on Youtube here. I found this documentary to be very educational and I believe many more people should learn about this problem. Hopefully, one day there will be reasonable patent rules and processes that wouldn't let scammers and patent troll take advantage of the innovation, creativity, and hard work many builders and entrepreneurs bring to reality. Not only Austin Meyer exposes patent trolls, flaws in the system, and corruption, but he also offers very good solution to the problem. The solution is presented at the end of the documentary with a great ending.
Imagine your ability to use your own computers, your ability to browse the internet on your own devices, your ability to make phone calls using your own mobile phones are patented and these patent holders can sue your for doing so. Does it sound ridiculous? Sadly, that seems to be the reality. While, we probably wouldn't see patent trolls to after individuals for using internet, computers, or phones just because it wouldn't go anywhere and this doesn't involve business, these patent trolls can use the same reasoning and go after business owners to extort money out of them. If they don't get paid they may put these small businesses out of business. Sadly, the documentary shows that there are real stories of businesses shutting down because they wouldn't pay and didn't have money for legal fees to fight in courts. System seems so broken.
Who are the patent trolls? These are entities whose sole mission is to get money out of businesses using the patent they own. These patent maybe something they filed, or bought. While they register as companies, these a shell companies that do not conduct any business, do not produce anything beneficial to anybody. They don't make money as a business, so they won't lose anything. Let's say some victims of these attacks decide to fight them in courts, and after years if these victims win, the patent trolls don't lose anything. Because they are using shell companies that doesn't own anything. They just create new shell companies and continues business as usual. Whey victims end up paying, the funds get siphoned to the trolls hiding behind these shell companies and their lawyers.
Austin travels to the place in Texas where many patent troll companies were registered as businesses, and presents us how all of these shell companies have empty offices, locked offices, and P.O. boxes. But no actual operating businesses. What a deception! What a scam!
One of the main questions we would ask regarding Austin's case is Why wouldn't these patent trolls go after Google instead of developers? Austin does a great job explaining. There is no point for these trolls to sue Google, because Google will definitely fight them in courts and destroy them. And because patent rules and laws allow it. Many people like Austin find themselves in similar situations where patent trolls claim rights for ideas that are so obvious that there is no way anybody should own these ideas. Why are ideas, simple ones that we have everyday patented anyway? That is another problem. Maybe one of the biggest ones. Patent office has a big roles creating this situation. They award many patents like this that should have been issued in the first place. Because of how the process is flawed, and patent examiners have very little time to review and research applications, many bad patent get issued. And this empowers patent trolls to do their evil.
Another problem uncovered in the documentary is that many patent trolls make their victims sign NDAs when getting paid. Usually those who sign NDAs are in the payment receiving side. In this case patent trolls not only get paid hundreds of thousands for nothing, but they also make their victims sign NDAs. Because of this those found themselves in such unfortunate situations cannot talk about it, and not much is shared regarding these cases.
Austen Meyer also uncovers corruption in the courts. Apparently there are judges who intentionally side with patent trolls, because their sons or relatives are the attorneys who are representing these patent trolls. The documentary shows this had been done in massive scales, and nobody faced consequences for such illegal behavior.
I would like to end this post with sharing Austin's solution for this patent scam problem. I highly recommend watching the documentary. Austin does a great job investigating and presenting the problem.
- No more METHOD patents... they're stupid!
- No more SOFTWARE patents... we have copyright law for that!
- 5-year duration only. 20 YEARS is too long for a patent!
- File lawsuits in defendants' district... not in EAST TEXAS!
- Trolls should reveal who they are... not hide behind dummy LLCs.
- Can't sue someone for USING technology. Sue the creator of the technology.
- Can't sue if you've made nothing! Only able to sue if you CREATE!